


you feel like home

by softestbutch



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Discussions of Suicide, F/F, Flashbacks, HAPPY THASMIN DAY, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, Love Confessions, Pining, also general mental illness, but really trust me it's very cute, hoooo boy well these two just really need to talk about their feelings, thasmin, tw for homophobic bullying, yaz is very in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28480434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softestbutch/pseuds/softestbutch
Summary: The Doctor didn’t need to know she loved her. All Yaz needed was for her to grab her hand as she showed her the universe.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 8
Kudos: 69





	you feel like home

_I’m in love with you._

Yaz knew what she had to say. She felt it, like an urge, in every moment. It was there as the Doctor explained peculiar planetary orbits, dancing haphazardly around the console. It was there as she marvelled at some cosmic phenomenon, eyes shining in the strange moonlight. Sometimes, Yaz would catch the Doctor for a second where she thought no one was watching, and she would look so, so sad. Those were the moments where it was loudest of all. I love you.

Yaz was quiet. She had been for weeks. She’d make sounds of agreement in between the Doctor’s long, winding sentences; she’d ask a quick question to encourage her trails of exposition when she stopped for breath. She didn’t often say more than a sentence at a time. If she did, she worried she might say it. I love you.

‘Y’alright, Yaz?’ Ryan asked her, sitting himself down on the hexagonal step just above hers. Yaz kept her eyes on the console, slightly out of focus, letting the warm light bloom and grow.  
‘Yeah. You?’  
‘Yeah, I’m good. You just, uh, seem a bit…’ he trailed off. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him fiddling with his fingernails. She shut her eyes for a moment, and turned to face him. He gave her a little smile.  
‘Ood Sphere’s cool, innit?’ he continued after a breath. ‘Once you get past all the, uh,’ he gestured to indicate the mouth tendrils, or whatever they were, and Yaz laughed a little.  
‘All the places she’s taken us have been cool. Seems like we haven’t stopped since… well, since she’s been back.’ Yaz let out an ‘mm’.  
‘New Earth were good the other day. Well, till I found those Slush Puppy things.’ Yaz laughed a bit more this time, returning to the image of Ryan off his head on whatever alien e-numbers they’d packed into them.  
‘And all that stuff she were saying about that bloke she used to be. Well, all those blokes. Still can’t quite wrap my head around that.’ It was silent for a moment. Behind her eyes now, Yaz could see the Doctor stamped onto every landscape, lying in the apple grass and sitting in the Orient Express and looking out at the singing towers. But lying and sitting and holding onto her were the ghosts of Rose, of Clara, of her long lost wife. She squeezed her eyes shut.

‘Fam!’ the Doctor announced, ‘how do we feel about Raxacoricofallapatorious? I’ve got an egg in the back that I’ve really been meaning to get back to them.’  
Ryan looked to Yaz in response, and she looked back at him, unsure of the level of desperation her expression conveyed. Ryan opened his mouth to speak.  
‘Or we could do Woman Wept, I hear they’ve opened up a right nice chippy there,’ the Doctor continued.  
‘Actually, Doc,’ the Doctor paused for a moment, her smile frozen in place, and turned to find Graham speaking. ‘That sounds good and all, but I was sort of hoping for a bit of an off day.’  
‘An off day? Ah right, of course. Yeah.’ The Doctor was still smiling, but her energy had deflated. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Course.’ Another pause. ‘Home?’  
‘Sounds good, Doc,’ Graham said. It was quiet for a second, and then, ‘just running a bit low on cheese for my sarnies is all. Proper Earth cheese, I mean. As much as I appreciated that five-dimensional delicatessen.’

The TARDIS whirred, and the noise was welcome. It was an old noise. A familiar noise. A noise that came close to drawing Yaz out of the headspace she’d fallen into, bringing up images of those first days and weeks with the Doctor, the freedom she’d felt, the elation. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel those feelings anymore. It was just that every new thing she learnt about the woman who’d whisked her away seemed to do nothing but highlight the vacuous gaps in between. All she wanted was to be close to her. She was holding back too, of course. But the thought of stripping away what separated them, of healing as opposed to just running away together, felt like a threat to everything.

The Doctor didn’t need to know she loved her. All Yaz needed was for her to grab her hand as she showed her the universe.

*

‘Park Hill!’ the Doctor announced, stepping down from the console platform and skipping towards the door.  
‘Well, at least it’s not my chair this time,’ Graham said, grabbing his jacket from what he, Ryan and Yaz had assumed was a coat hanger. ‘Still waiting on that thirty quid back, Doc.’  
As Graham stepped out onto the concrete, Yaz could hear Ryan not far behind him, and fragments of an offer to go and get some breakfast with him, if he wasn’t up to going back to the house. Graham put his arm around him as they walked, and Ryan didn’t even flinch.

‘You off to Raxacorico-whatsit, then?’ Yaz asked, turning in the TARDIS doorway.  
‘Yeah. Well, maybe. Maybe I’ll do, uh, Enceladus. Oh, or I have been meaning to visit the Lost Moon of Poosh.’  
‘Cool.’  
‘And you’re off home. And that’s good. Off day.’  
‘Home, yeah.’  
‘You have told your Mum and Dad thanks for that time I had tea, haven’t you?’  
‘Yeah.’  
‘They’re a good bunch, your family. Good to have family. Good to have tea.’  
‘Yeah. Yeah it is.’ Yaz thought about her family then. She thought about her flat, and the sofa, and how she sat there and thought. She thought about those days she’d gone without eating, sitting in her room, motionless. But the Doctor was alive. It was all okay in the end.

She wasn’t sure how much time passed in the doorway. Both she and the Doctor were looking at the floor. She’d thought she’d never feel her presence again, feel the energy of her in the air. That thought had broken her. That thought had taken her right back to the dark days of high school and the Peak District and little Sonya crying down the phone.

But it was okay now. The Doctor was back. Why, then, did she feel as though she hadn’t stopped yearning for her, that she hadn’t been unbroken? She loved her. She loved her.

‘Home’s boring, actually,’ Yaz said suddenly. ‘Can I come with you?’  
‘Yes. Yes you can,’ the Doctor said quickly, pivoting on her heel, swinging for the door. And as the last sliver of the real world disappeared between the doors, Yaz got a little glimpse of the wonder and thrill she’d felt when she first set foot inside that old ship - of when she’d first set eyes on that strange woman in the train.

That day, she’d felt stuck. What had once seemed like a decisive step forward had turned into a monotonous drone, putting on a uniform, dealing with petty disputes. She’d chosen the police force because she wanted to help people. She wanted to be that hand reaching out that she’d needed years before. But then she’d put on her luminous jacket and all of a sudden she was acting out what she’d been told to - the same template of skills pushed over and over onto situations that they didn’t seem to fit. She found herself feeling that the jacket, the boots, the whole tradition she’d become part of did nothing but put up a fence between herself and those she thought she could help. And she couldn’t get out from under the legacy of violence she’d so vowed to chip at from the inside. She couldn’t forgive herself for the fear she’d see in the eyes of Brown and Black kids when she’d move them on from their loitering spots.

And then there was the Doctor. The Doctor, at first, had been yet another unexpected issue in a situation that had made Yaz feel altogether out of her depth. There was, however, a sense of wonder at her that had taken root at the pit of Yaz’s stomach - something unidentifiable at first, that smouldered and later bloomed, as she watched that eccentric woman she couldn’t quite place scale a bloody crane. A curious appreciation had turned into a fascination, and she found she couldn’t untangle the wonders of the universe from the woman that stood next to her as she took them in.

The Doctor was everything that her life at home couldn’t be. She was movement, and she was excitement, and she was so very far away from everything.

Home life was still. When things were at their worst in secondary school, every day had felt just as crushing as the last. There was something so cruel about the banal everyday. She felt her body crumple under the weight of such imposed routine, such ritualised misery. Every day she’d pull on that same uniform, feel the same chill in the wintry dawn, walk those same corridors, feel that same feeling of smallness, of this life’s inescapability. When the Doctor was gone, Yaz felt she may as well have been back there. Each day was saturated in sameness. All she seemed to feel was the sinking in her stomach that came with another day without any missed calls, and the stale taste in her mouth when she couldn’t muster up the energy to brush her teeth.

_Izzy Flint told everyone. Everyone knows._

Those teenage days were punctuated by nothing but that thought, over and over.

_The Doctor could be dead. The Doctor could be dead and I did nothing to stop it._

That thought felt no different. She was right back in that space.

*

The TARDIS felt significantly emptier without Ryan and Graham. Yaz was acutely aware of its vast space. She found herself following the whirs of the console, breathing in time with the ancient wheezes. They didn’t feel particularly machine-like - there was something in them that seemed organic, almost conscious. Yaz felt somewhere that if you were to open up an ancient tree, gnarled by the years, watching over the endless cycles of rainforest, you might find some energy similar to what the TARDIS’ machinery exuded. It felt grown, not manufactured. The Doctor seemed entangled with it, too. She carried it with her, and it carried her. They were like an ecosystem.

The other TARDIS Yaz had gotten to know could never quite replicate that feeling of connection. When the days and nights spent in her bedroom became too much, she’d packed a bag. It was the same one she’d used when she left for the Peaks. Ryan had found her in the nondescript house they knew as the TARDIS two days later. Sonya had been calling him. That fact made Yaz feel like she was drowning.

The lights in that other TARDIS were too bright. Its noises were too artificial. She’d curled up under the console at night, just to feel some semblance of closeness to the Doctor. But the machine - it felt much more obviously a machine than the TARDIS Yaz had come to think of as home - felt void of whatever it was that put her at ease. Perhaps it wasn’t so much the TARDIS, as the Doctor, who made her feel so content in that space. Yaz spent the months in and out of that clinical TARDIS utterly fixated on the Doctor. She was filled with guilt and longing, in amongst a swirling mass of other debilitating emotions. Days and nights were one, and all were defined by the Doctor. It felt like the end of everything.

And then the Doctor had returned. And when she did, she was so desperate to carry on as normal that it made Yaz feel sick to her stomach. Because everything was different. She knew she couldn’t carry on like this.

‘Crispallian?’ came the Doctor’s voice, unexpectedly small but still enough to jolt Yaz back into the room.  
‘What?’ Yaz said automatically.  
‘Just, uh, checking out some planets. There’s, um, there’s Akhaten. We could try that. Or Ancient Telos. Or -’  
‘Why are you doing this?’ Yaz asked quickly, before she’d properly processed it.  
‘What?’ the Doctor said, equally automatic.

The two took a breath. Yaz began to panic.

‘We’ve barely stopped for breath these past few weeks,’ Yaz said. It felt too sudden. She’d rehearsed this conversation in so many different ways that finally being in the moment made her feel distinctly outside of her body.  
The Doctor paused. She wasn’t looking at Yaz. ‘Lots to do, is all.’  
‘You never let me in,’ came Yaz’s voice. Now, those words were scary. Her voice was shaky. She held her hands out of the Doctor’s sight, digging her fingernails into her palms.

That ancient room was quiet now. Something about that felt louder than it had when they were talking.

‘Forget it. Sorry. Planets,’ Yaz said. She looked up at the Doctor, and caught her gaze for just a second. Something about her looked young. She wanted to reach out and place her hand on hers.

The Doctor kept her eyes on the floor. She let out a little breath that was almost a sigh.

‘I can’t fix this, can I?’ the Doctor said. Yaz found herself flipping through a few different interpretations of the ambiguous question in her head.  
‘I’m not good at… at talking. In this body, I mean. Not that it’s ever been my strong suit.’  
As the Doctor spoke, Yaz thought about the reams of information she’d compiled in the TARDIS house in Sheffield. The arrangement of all those tiny little details from the most obscure corners of forums and archives had sometimes told her more that was concrete about the Doctor than two years travelling with her.  
‘I’ve been arrogant, I’ve been repressed… But I’ve got closer to emotionally intelligent before.’ Yaz thought of the blurry photos pinned to the wall. Which Doctor was arrogant? Which of them were kind? Which shared her Doctor’s mannerisms? How would the man with the white hair and the velvet coat hold himself in a room? Would the leather jacket and the buzzcut make the Doctor more inclined to share aspects of themselves with those they held close? Was the toothy smile of the Doctor with the scarf as inviting as the one her Doctor wore?  
‘This body - in this body I just wanna run. I want to experience, I want to hold. Fast as I can.’ The Doctor smiled for a second there. Definitely more beautiful than her previous self.  
‘Thinking about everything that’s happened lately… That would be slow. That would be hard. I don’t want to feel like that. Not in a body that’s built for running, for exploring, for seeing wonders anew with my mates.’

Yaz wanted to counter everything the Doctor was saying. But she knew, of course, that she and the Doctor were the same. She also knew that she didn’t want to face up to that, because she didn’t want to feel when she could run away instead. And that made her like the Doctor all over again. Layer upon layer.

‘We’ve gotta talk, haven’t we?’ As she spoke, the Doctor looked at Yaz. And for the first time in a long time, Yaz felt as though they were really seeing each other.

*

6:30am. Alarm.

6:45am. Out of bed.

6:50am. Brush teeth.

Yaz always angled herself in a particular way as she stood at the sink. It wasn’t conscious. She didn’t want to see her reflection in the bathroom mirror.

6:55am. Shower.

7:05am. Get dressed.

7:10am. Breakfast.

Yaz’s breakfasts had been getting smaller. She wondered when exactly Sonya had stopped watching early morning cartoons over her cereal. Her kid sister was on the cusp of something new.

7:25am. Pack bag.

7:30am. Deep breath.

7:35am. Bus.

Yaz had a specific seat on the bus. She kept her eyes down. She’d put her earphones in, but wouldn’t turn any music on. She had to make sure she could hear what people were saying.

Usually, they said nothing. What she could make out would be noise - gossip and cruel laughter and mean jibes and feelings desperate to hide their hurt. Yaz would sit, hunched over, seeking to occupy as small a space as possible, and ache not to be perceived.

Today, she sensed something different.

The first sign was a glance. It was nothing but a quick look upwards as she boarded, from a girl in the year below her. Her name was Carrie, Yaz thought she remembered from Facebook. She supposed they must share this bus every day. They’d never once looked at each other before. It made Yaz feel pleasantly invisible, those she silently coexisted with. But Carrie had glanced at her, and it was distinct. Yaz considered this, her heart rate increasing as she walked further down the aisle to her seat. Just before she could reach it, the bus had jolted to life, throwing her balance and causing her to stumble a little. A hand, reached out instinctively to break her fall, had collided with the knee of a girl sat opposite her spot. She felt her skin flush as she yanked her hand away and slung her backpack onto her seat, mumbling a quick sorry.  
‘Maybe she likes you,’ came a voice from somewhere behind her. She pivoted quickly, but every potential source of the voice was looking down, some laughing to themselves. The girl sitting next to the one she’d collided with sniggered.

Yaz felt sick. And she wouldn’t stop feeling sick for quite some time.

*

‘I don’t like to think about it,’ Yaz said. She and the Doctor were sitting on the floor with their backs against the console. Yaz held her knees tight to her chest.  
‘It’s so much easier to just run away instead,’ she continued. ‘And running feels like winning, for a time. But it catches up with you.’

*

Lunchtime, Crookes Valley Secondary.

Yaz held her knees to her chest. She was perching on the closed lid of a toilet in the cubicles beside the arts corridor. She held her breath, clenching her jaw to stall the wheezes and sobs forcing their way out of her.

_Everyone knew._

She’d been on the way out of first period. It was RE, which she liked. The atmosphere that particular teacher created, of a very over-the-top, well meaning brand of inclusion, made it feel a little easier to breathe. Perhaps she’d let her guard down. The morning had scared her, but eventually she let herself get absorbed in the work. By the time she left the classroom, she hadn’t thought about what people had been saying on the bus for maybe half an hour.

‘Fucking pervert!’

The voice had ripped Yaz away from her mental haze. Before she could react, a girl taller than her had slammed into her at an angle, causing her to hit her back hard on the wall of lockers.  
‘Izzy knows what you said about her.’  
Yaz could do nothing else but look up at Chloe Hunt, a comfortable member of the upper stratum of the Year 11 food chain. Chloe was a shark, who held herself with a level of self-importance that was only compounded by her physical height advantage.

‘Yasmin Khan wants to have sex with Izzy Flint. Yasmin Khan wants to _fuck_ Izzy Flint.’

People turned.

‘What?’ Yaz said. Her voice was small. ‘What?’ Louder. ‘She’s lying!’

Boys were whispering and laughing. One whistled.

‘She’s a lesbian.’ She enunciated every syllable. ‘She’s probably been looking at all of us in the changing rooms. She’s been looking at girls in their underwear!’

‘I never did that!’ Yaz said. People were crowding round now. She saw the glint of a smartphone - someone filming.

‘Do you think Izzy would have ever been your friend if she knew that? If she knew you were looking at her like that?’  
‘I wasn’t looking at her. I’ve never -’ She was cut off.  
‘How many sleepovers was it? Back when she’d actually hang out with you? Football? Swimming lessons?’ She shoved Yaz again, pinning her up for a second. ‘You’re sick.’

‘Hey!’ Standing in the doorway of Yaz’s RE classroom was Miss Sullivan. She marched out, brow furrowed, and Chloe backed away with a scowl - not before she gave Yaz one last kick so she lost her balance.  
‘Yaz, are you okay?’ Miss Sullivan asked, placing herself collectedly between Yaz and Chloe. Yaz looked at her, feeling her eyes burn with tears, and ran towards the double doors to the stairs.

She kept her eyes on the floor as she swept through the corridor, letting her hair fall down to obscure the sides of her face. People weren’t looking at her here like they had upstairs, but the news was clearly beginning to travel. She saw, out of the corner of her eye, the odd student whispering, or looking up from their phones to stare at her. When she reached the art toilets, she locked herself inside. She didn’t know what else to do.

*

‘I stayed there all day. I didn’t want to be seen. Miss Sullivan reported it, so they sent people looking for me. But I didn’t come out until 4, once I could be sure everyone was gone. I just sat in there, thinking.’  
‘I hate thinking,’ said the Doctor.  
‘Me too.’

It was quiet for a while. The Doctor fiddled with the hem of her trousers. Sitting still didn’t suit her. But Yaz could tell that she was listening.

‘Who was Izzy?’ the Doctor said after a second.  
‘She was my friend, she...’ Yaz paused, ‘she was my best friend.’  
‘And she hurt you?’  
Yaz took a breath. She found it difficult to harbour resentment when it wasn’t directed at herself.  
‘She did,’ she said quietly.  
‘You liked her?’ the Doctor asked, still looking out towards the edge of the console room.  
‘I… I just wanted to be close to her,’ Yaz said. She looked down at her hand, inches from the Doctor, and moved it to her lap self-consciously.

She closed her eyes for a second, listening to the Doctor’s gentle breathing.

*

Midnight, Park Hill.

Yaz lay awake on the floor, listening to Izzy’s breathing. They’d tired themselves out with all the excitement of the sleepover, and Izzy had soon broken her promise to stay up all night. Yaz didn’t mind. She just wanted to be close to her.

She gently removed the blanket from over herself and scooched across the floor to the foot of the bed where Izzy was sleeping. She’d given it up for her, of course. For some reason, she liked the idea of Izzy sleeping in her bed. She liked providing for her friend. And sleeping with a hoodie for a pillow wasn’t that bad, just for a night.

She looked at her face, so peaceful in sleep. Her eyelashes were long, guiding the eye to the gentle curve of her nose, her soft cupid’s bow, her gently defined chin. That face gave Yaz so much comfort. Izzy made her feel like she could take on anything. Yaz found her incredible, and to be by her side made her feel worthy like nothing else could. She lingered, enjoying the quiet, and the opportunity to admire her.

_Kiss her._

Yaz squeezed her eyes shut, fidgeting, urging the thought to leave her. It didn’t mean anything. It was recurring, intrusive.

She’d never kissed anyone. Her Mum insisted she was too young to even be thinking about it, but it felt like every other person in Year 9 had kissed people. Some had even gone further, or so they said. Yaz was embarrassed, deep down, and she was sure that was just coming out sideways. She didn’t want to be left behind, or called a prude. She just hadn’t met a boy who didn’t gross her out yet. Give it a year or two, and she was sure at least some boys in her year would start to look suitable.

For now, she just wanted to enjoy riding out these last waves of childhood. She’d felt so content earlier that evening. Her Dad had been more than a little excited for Yaz to have a friend over, and had bought two bases for Yaz and Izzy to design their own pizzas. He’d set out every ingredient in little chunks on little plates, and spent the whole time making silly jokes, making Sonya and Yaz laugh. Yaz had a feeling Izzy wouldn’t want to admit to doing something so uncool at the weekend, if anyone asked on Monday. But she couldn’t deny that she longed for those kinds of evenings, for simple, childlike fun. And though hanging onto these experiences with Izzy alongside sometimes felt like a losing battle, in that moment, she felt like everything was okay.

*

‘Izzy started making other friends eventually,’ Yaz said. She’d relaxed her posture a little, stretching one leg out. ‘Cooler friends than me. And eventually it became clear that someone like Izzy Flint couldn’t admit to being friends with someone like me.’  
Yaz was sure the Doctor huffed at that. ‘Cooler than Yaz,’ she said.  
Yaz inhaled. ‘Letting go though… That felt impossible.’

Yaz looked at the Doctor for a moment, thinking all at once about the people she’d let go. She wondered how often she thought about them. She’d hastily torn down her little collection of a few known associates in the TARDIS she’d been working in, once the Doctor came back. The thought of the Doctor seeing her piecing together the lives of Rose, of the warm-looking ginger woman she couldn’t track down a name for, and her elusive wife, made her feel invasive. It was a self-directed disgust that reminded her of what she’d felt when she realised her juvenile feelings for Izzy Flint. The Doctor deserved her privacy over her past. But she couldn’t deny the jealousy mixed in too.

Yaz left time for the Doctor to speak, but she didn’t.

*

‘My brother thinks he might be gay,’ said Kayla, not looking up from her phone.

She was sprawled out on Yaz’s bed, a little less gracefully than Izzy had been two years earlier. Yaz was sitting at the foot of it, scrolling through her phone since Kayla seemed to have set that as the precedent, picking occasionally at a plate of party food her Dad had gleefully made up for Yaz and her friend.

Those words made Yaz’s skin prickle and her heart rate increase. Kayla had said it so casually. Yaz scrambled for an equally casual response.  
‘Which brother?’ she managed.  
‘Well, Damien, obviously.’ Yaz kicked herself as she remembered that Kayla’s other brother, from her Dad’s new girlfriend, was in fact a toddler.  
‘Met some guy at college he likes. Might bring him round for tea at Mum’s. Are you eating those pakoras?’ Kayla’s continuation was so cool and collected, and Yaz felt ready to pass out.  
‘What?’  
‘They just look kinda… well, terrible.’ Yaz felt a rush of protectiveness over her Dad’s cooking, but decided to file it away for later. She couldn’t let this topic of conversation slip away.

‘Do you support… um, gay rights?’  
‘What?’ Kayla said, finally looking up at Yaz.  
‘You don’t?’  
‘No! I mean, yes! Course I don’t mind gays. Yaz, why are you acting all weird?’  
‘I’m not!’ Yaz’s tone definitely felt less stable than she’d hoped it would.  
‘Are you homophobic?’  
‘No!’ This wasn’t going well.  
‘Well you’re acting very much not cool about it.’  
Yaz took a moment to breathe. ‘You’re cool about it then?’  
‘Of course. Yaz, I watch Sherlock.’  
‘What the hell does that have to do with it?’  
‘Nothing. Doesn’t matter.’

There was a silence. ‘Guess it’s just your culture.’  
Yaz felt a wave of anger override the anxiety. ‘What?’  
She thought of her parents, and of their joint commitment to honouring their shared heritage and to raising Yaz and Sonya to accept all walks of life and fight for liberation. Nothing in ‘her culture’ was incompatible with love and acceptance.  
‘Forget it.’ Kayla said, opening up Instagram again.

‘No, Kayla, you don’t get it. I’m gay.’

Yaz stopped breathing. The words had just come out. All of sudden, she was on autopilot, as though her body didn’t belong to her.

‘What?’ Kayla didn’t even close Instagram before she practically chucked her phone across the bed. She was really listening now.

‘Well, no, I’m not gay. I’m not.’ The passage of time was feeling very obscure. Yaz felt like a prey animal, hyper alert and ready to fight or fly. ‘I just… sometimes… sometimes there’s just one girl I like.’

‘Oh my god,’ Kayla said.  
‘Yeah.’  
‘Oh my god, Yaz.’ Yaz couldn’t place Kayla’s expression. Just its intensity. ‘Yaz, is it me?’  
‘What? No!’ This was the opposite of any conversation she’d ever acted out in her head. She wanted to dismiss this version of the fantasy, and redo her bits. Reality, unfortunately, persisted.

Yaz sighed. ‘It’s Izzy Flint.’  
‘What?!’

Of all the times the word ‘what’ had come up in this conversation, that one was definitely the most laced with shock. Yaz had never felt so exposed as Kayla looked at her. She couldn’t believe that she was sharing this moment with her, of all people. Yaz realised she didn’t particularly like Kayla that much. Her voice was grating, and she was always mean about the easy targets at school. Unfortunately, as it stood, she was also Yaz’s best friend.

‘You… fancy Izzy?’ Kayla asked her, her eyes still wide.  
‘I don’t know, I…’  
‘When was the last time you two even spoke to each other?’  
Yaz felt a pang of hurt. Izzy didn’t reply to her texts anymore. She didn’t even post on her wall on her last birthday - and Yaz knew she knew when it was, because it was the day after Izzy’s grandma’s, and she always had to plan her parties around when Izzy would be back from visiting her.

Kayla, to Yaz’s surprise, started laughing, and it only got louder.  
‘Well you’ve got to tell her!’  
‘No, no -’  
‘She barely even knows who you are anymore, and you’re obsessed with her!’ Kayla’s laughter sounded manic, and Yaz felt desperate. ‘This is so cute. Everyone’s gonna want to hear about this!’  
‘Kayla, you can’t tell _anyone_.’  
‘You’re not ashamed, are you?’ The words came close to something right, but the tone was so wrong.  
‘I… I don’t know.’  
‘Babe, no one cares. They’re legalising gay marriage. Look at Ellen!’  
‘What has Ellen got to do with -’  
‘Get over yourself, Yaz! This is prime gossip. Everyone will think you’re brave, plus it’ll make Izzy look like a bitch for getting you so infatuated and leaving!’

Of course. Kayla was perpetually middling in the school hierarchy. Izzy had always managed to breeze her way upwards with so little effort. Maybe Kayla wanted to be her. Maybe she just wanted to drag her down. A few moments passed, as the still giggling Kayla picked her phone back up, and Yaz collected her thoughts.

‘Look, Kayla. I get that you’re cool with all of this. But it’s been hard for me. I’m not sure if I even like her. And I’m definitely not sure that I’m…’ She breathed. ‘I’m just not ready for anyone to know. I’m sorry.’  
Kayla looked up at her again, all trace of her laughter finally gone. ‘Ah shit, Yaz, you’re really messed up about this, aren’t you?’  
Yaz sighed. ‘Kind of.’ She shifted on the bed. ‘It’s something I’ve been hiding for years, and I really want to think it’s nothing, but…’ Kayla was on her phone again. ‘Kayla, are you listening?’  
‘Yes, yes, I am, I’m listening.’ She was doing her best at sincere. Yaz noticed, though, that the colour had drained out of her face. She opened her mouth to ask what was up. ‘Yaz, I… I posted a tweet. About this.’  
Yaz froze.  
‘I deleted it! I deleted it just now. No one will have seen it.’  
She couldn’t speak. If she opened her mouth, she was sure she’d be sick.  
‘It was up for a minute, two minutes tops. I didn’t realise this was so hard for you, Yaz, I -’

Yaz left the room.

*

‘What happened?’ the Doctor asked, facing Yaz now.  
‘Oh, that’s where we came in. Snarky comments on the bus, crying in the loos.’  
The Doctor looked genuinely sad then. It was an engaged kind of sad, like a shared sad - a far cry from the moments of individual anguish Yaz would find the Doctor in when she thought she was alone.  
‘I’m sorry, Yaz,’ she said quietly.

Yaz wasn’t sure she could bear to tell the Doctor the rest. She remembered that feeling of having the ground ripped out from underneath her. She felt as though she’d been harbouring something, nurturing it perhaps, even growing - when it was ripped out of her hands, and left open to anything the world could throw at her. Feelings of first attraction were turned sour, and everything that Yaz found within herself felt like dirt she just couldn’t expunge. Her self-hatred bloomed in the dank and the dark, and she reached such a level of desperation that she couldn’t see a path forward. So she skipped school, got on a train into the Peaks and sat alone, readying herself to jump.

She looked up at the Doctor. She gave her a sad smile.  
‘Things got worse before they got better. I got to the end of my rope.’ She breathed. ‘Doctor… I almost killed myself.’  
The Doctor made a little noise on her inhale, meeting Yaz’s eyes with a look that was at once sad, desperate and so young.  
‘Can’t have a universe with no Yaz,’ she said, so gently.

All at once, Yaz felt all of her love for the Doctor swell up inside her. She’d spent a year thinking she might never get her back. Their abrupt parting had landed her back in Sheffield, back in her mundane life, and that had been difficult, for someone so used to running. Travelling in the TARDIS had got her away from the painful memories that had worked their way into every hill of her hometown, and, yes, seeing anything and everything she could imagine across all of time and space did make living feel worthwhile. But there was more. She wanted to travel because of the Doctor. She wanted to see her, and to hold her, and if that meant exploring the universe too, then that was just a bonus. The Doctor was what she wanted. The Doctor was who she loved.

‘Don’t cry!’ the Doctor said, and she wiped the tear that had spilled over from Yaz’s left eye. The touch was so tender. They shared so little touch, and Yaz felt all of the tension leave her body with the Doctor’s palm against her. She placed her hand over the Doctor’s.

They stayed like that for a second, eyes closed, foreheads close to touching. When the Doctor drew her hand away from Yaz’s face, she made an involuntary noise at the loss of the sensation. The Doctor took her hand in hers instead.

She’d seen incredible things out there, but nothing quite as incredible as the Doctor herself. She was like a universe. She was vast, with a sense of wonder, and of the infinite. Her energy, her vision, and her dedication to love and justice defined the joy Yaz would feel at any cosmic wonder she experienced with her. If the universe were to have consciousness, she thought, it would manifest in the Doctor.

‘I just wanted you to know some of these things about me,’ Yaz said. ‘I just want to… to really talk to you. I want to know you.’ Yaz thought, as she was speaking, about what the Doctor had said in the past - that she was vast, the summit of a mountain, and not something that any human could truly connect with. That had hurt. But all Yaz knew now was that they were sharing a space, sharing an emotion, and the Doctor’s hand in hers felt like the most natural form of connection the universe could produce.  
The Doctor took Yaz’s hand and softly placed a kiss on her knuckles. ‘You know I’m not good at social situations...’  
She sounded like she felt the need to continue, but Yaz wanted to key into the Doctor’s communication style, rather than make her bend to a more typical one. She kissed the Doctor’s knuckles in turn, and her message was clear: it’s okay.

‘This past year’s been hard,’ Yaz said quietly, ‘for both of us, I think.’  
The Doctor nodded ever so slightly, stroking the side of Yaz’s hand with her thumb.  
‘Has it been longer than that… for you?’ Yaz asked slowly.  
‘It doesn’t matter.’  
‘It does to me.’  
‘I don’t… I don’t experience time the same way you do,’ she said, not meeting Yaz’s eyes. ‘But yeah. It was maybe longer than a year.’  
Yaz felt her eyes sting with tears. ‘What happened to you, Doctor?’ she whispered.  
The Doctor looked up at her, wordless, and shook her head gently.

Yaz felt a wave of helplessness, just like she had when she’d first been reunited with the Doctor. That was the Doctor without hope - dirty, and skinny, and sick. She’d only seen her briefly in that state. Yaz had led her to a warm bath, and left her clothes folded neatly in the corner of her bedroom, gently kissing her fingers before touching her shirt. She’d emerged the next morning in her braces and coat, and spent the day almost performing the role of the Doctor - projecting normality, even when Yaz could see how her coat hung off her jutting shoulders and how her eyes glazed over with sadness in every moment of quiet.

Yaz couldn’t stand not knowing what had happened to the Doctor. During that year she’d spent alone, she couldn’t count the sleepless nights she’d had as she assessed every possibility of what might have happened on Gallifrey. She’d doze in the early hours and find herself back in that crucial moment, with the Doctor in the doorway, distraught and just beyond her reach. Again and again, she’d run after her, reach out, tell her to stop - and she’d find herself moving nowhere, shouting silently at a silhouette she could never grasp.

When the Doctor came back and fell so quickly into the swing of pretending everything was fine, Yaz was well aware it was likely a trauma response. She decided she’d let the Doctor follow its course, vowing to always be close by, and, should she fall apart, to be ready to hold her. After all, she’d seen all of this before. She herself had entered the TARDIS with a fractured sense of self, harbouring an inescapable rupture, but had thrown herself into this new life. She’d lived only on the surface, burying her hurt deeper, and filling the gap with experiences, fast and loud and exhilarating. She’d been reckless. And she couldn’t deny she’d loved it. But when her past had started to catch up with her, when she’d felt a love that required more of herself than she was willing to expose, and when she’d finally had everything around her come to an abrupt end, no one but herself had been there to understand her, and to pick up her pieces. She wanted to be there for the Doctor.

Yaz breathed, and allowed these fast, entangled trains of thought to wash over her. She looked up at the Doctor, and slowly, she smiled. Despite everything, Yaz and the Doctor were in the TARDIS.

‘You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,’ Yaz said, shifting to rest her head on the Doctor’s shoulder. ‘But when, if, you need someone to listen…’ She didn’t need to finish her sentence. The Doctor stroked her hair.  
‘Soon,’ she said, almost inaudibly.

It was quiet for a long while. Yaz relaxed so far into the Doctor’s touch that she began to feel the distinction between their two beings melt away. Time slowed, defined only by the cycle of their synchronised breathing and the gentle movements of the Doctor running her fingers through Yaz’s hair. That moment became everything. There was only the ancient hum of the TARDIS, the orange glow soft on their eyelids. Sealed in that moment, for all of their pasts, futures and selves, Yaz and the Doctor were one.

‘Doctor?’ Yaz said quietly a little while later. Part of her expected the Doctor to be asleep.  
‘Hm?’ she responded, leaning her head against Yaz’s.  
‘I just wanted you to know how much I love travelling with you.’ She looked up at the ceiling. ‘You’ve changed my life in so many ways. And I’m… I’m just so happy to have you back.’  
She sensed the Doctor’s smile. ‘I’m so happy to be back,’ she said after a second. ‘Back in my home, back out there, back with my fam.’ She shifted, and looked at Yaz. ‘Back with you.’  
Yaz let the moment warm her. It was contentment, like nothing she’d ever known.  
‘Doctor?’ she said again.  
‘Hm?’  
‘I think I love you.’

Yaz saw the Doctor’s face change, curves sketched out by the warm orange light and contrasting with the soft blue coming from the side. There was confusion, and anxiety, and wonder, and fear, and a smile that lingered. When her expression settled, it brought Yaz right back to the look she’d given her when she came to on Gallifrey, Yaz kneeling by her side. It was exhausted, and it was love.

They shared a smile. And slowly, the Doctor moved to kiss her.

Yaz felt all of the tension that sat within her dissipate. All of her traumatic years, all of her night terrors as she coped with the Doctor’s possible death, seemed to become smoke, swirling out of her in an exhale and diffusing into the orange wonder of the machine around her. She felt herself let go, at last, of the past year, and she was sure she could feel that the Doctor was doing the same. The Doctor ran her thumb along her cheek softly, and it felt like music. For the first time in a long time, Yaz felt entirely within her body: one entity, in one moment, doing, it felt like, exactly what was meant. She could finally breathe.

When their lips parted, the Doctor rested her forehead against Yaz’s, still cupping her cheek.

Yaz knew that the Doctor wasn’t good at social situations. But as they sat in that moment, she was sure she could feel words being communicated with each gentle stroke of the back of her hand. It was warm, and peaceful, and Yaz wasn’t sure she ever wanted to be anywhere else. Over and over, the tender movements became words.

_You feel like home._

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on twitter - @softestbutch!


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